Wednesday, 18 January 2017

Duet for many

In April 2017, 115 of talented young musicians will gather together for a long weekend to rehearse and play a programme which consists of Mahler's Symphony No. 5 and Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2. The orchestra is the Duet Philharmonic Orchestra, and every two years they gather musicians aged between 13 and 18 who are studying in the UK to perform large scale symphonic repertoire. The project arose out of the perhaps rather crazy idea to perform Mahler's Symphony No. 8. Conducted by Ronald Corp, a huge choir and orchestra of young people performed Mahler's Symphony No. 8 at the Royal Festival Hall in 2013 (you can see a programme about it on YouTube). Two years later in 2015 it was Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony (see on YouTube). This year the concert is on April 10, at the Royal Festival Hall. Ronald Corp again conducts and the pianist in the Prokofiev will be Oxana Shevchenko, winner of the 2010 Scottish International Piano Competition.

The Duet Philharmonic Orchestra is the brainchild of the Duet Foundation, which supports young musicians in a variety ways, with financial support to assist with their fees, travel costs, competition costs, DVD productions, access to masterclasses, as well as both new instruments and loaned instruments. The foundation is supported by the Duet Group.

If you book tickets for the concert of Mahler's Symphony No. 5 and Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 on April 10, 2017 at southbankcentre.com then you can get 50% discount by quoting the discount code DUETFIFTY

Quickening:

Songs by Robert Hugill to texts by English and Welsh poets now available from Amazon

four delicate, sensitive settings of Ivor Gurney, drawing performances of like quality. - it is Rosalind Ventris’s viola, weaving its way around and between the voice and William Vann’s piano, that is most beguilingGramphone magazine Jan 2018